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With Humble and Contrite Hearts
Read more: With Humble and Contrite HeartsPerhaps among the greatest of Psalms is David’s 50/51: Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love; according to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, […]
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The Desert – Struggling in a Flat Land
Read more: The Desert – Struggling in a Flat LandOne of the best-known sayings to have come from the Desert Fathers is: “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” To a large degree the saying extols the virtue of stability. Moving from place to place never removes the problem – it only postpones the inevitable. Somewhere, sometime we have to […]
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New “Page” Posted
Read more: New “Page” PostedI have combined the series on the one-and-two-storey universe into a six-part series and posted it under the Pages section on the right margin of the Blog. People can now click and read the entire string. I hope this will be of interest to some. It is in the pages section with the title: Christianity […]
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Music from Orthodox Georgia
Read more: Music from Orthodox GeorgiaAmong the older Orthodox nations in the world is the Republic of Georgia. Their local traditions include many saints, wonderful churches, and some of the most hauntingly beautiful music anywhere in the Orthodox world. This is a small clip from a Georgian monastery. Enjoy.
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Christian Atheism
Read more: Christian AtheismThe title for this post sounds like an oxymoron, and, of course, it is. How can one be both an atheist and a Christian? Again, I am wanting to push the understanding of the one-versus-two-storey universe. In the history of religious thought, one of the closest versions to what I am describing as a “two-storey” […]
atheism, Conversion, Culture, Knowledge of God, Liturgy, Orthodox Christianity, Scripture, The Sacraments
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Living a One Storey Life
Read more: Living a One Storey LifeI have chosen to use language of the “first and second storey” to describe the kind of bifurcation that the modern world has experienced over the past several centuries. Its results have been to smash the religious world into “sacred” and “secular” and to make believing both harder and disbelief more natural. Thus, to many […]
atheism, Conversion, Culture, Knowledge of God, Orthodox Christianity, The Journey of Faith, Union with God
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The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley Hopkins
Read more: The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest (a convert from Anglicanism) and perhaps the greatest modern (?) poet of the English Language (ok, he’s my favorite). My second daughter, Khouria Kathryn, made me aware of this poem. Hopkins is wonderfully sacramental in his poetry – God permeates his words and the world his words come […]
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Speaking of Christianity – Part 4 of the Meaning of Words
Read more: Speaking of Christianity – Part 4 of the Meaning of WordsSome years back, the Evangelical-convert-to-Rome, Thomas Howard, wrote a book, Splendor in the Ordinary. In it he argued for a sacramental world view and spoke of how that might effect the local home. I recall the book because it came out while I was in seminary and caused a minor stir. Some of us were […]
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The Meaning of Language – Part 3
Read more: The Meaning of Language – Part 3Having pointed out that much of popular Christian language (and some images in sacred texts) lend themselves to the notion of a “two-storey” universe – and having noted that the second storey as the dwelling place of all things spiritual has almost insurmountable problems – how should we speak about such things? First, it seems […]
P.Stephen, reading your response to Janine, my heart rejoiced, because that is exactly it ! Living near a monastery, I…